Tesla Locks Other EVs Out of Its ‘Supercharger’ Walled Garden

Image: Tesla

If you’re a Model S owner, you’ve just been granted access to six of Tesla’s “Supercharger” stations sprinkled throughout California. And if you’re not an EV driver who doesn’t have a Model S in your driveway, well, Tesla has no juice for you.

Each solar-powered high-speed charging dock can provide about three hours of highway driving range in just 30 minutes, but there is a big, big, big catch: The stations are only compatible with Model S sedans packing the 85 kilowatt-hour — and, when it’s eventually available, the 60 kWh — battery pack. Everyone else? Move along. Nothing for you here.

This is problematic, given that there are, at this moment, just over 100 Model S sedans on the road but several hundred Tesla Roadsters, Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts along with a handful of cars with cords from Honda, BMW and Tesla nemesis Fisker Automotive. Tesla attributes the walled garden to the fact the S has a proprietary plug and a 20-kilowatt converter, meaning the quick-charge system would fry other EVs. But it also suggests Tesla is far more interested in locking people into its own charging ecosystem than facilitating the widespread adoption of EVs.

Tesla declined to comment on this point, or offer any broader explanation for its decision to lock everyone out of its infrastructure.

Tesla developed and built the network largely in secret, rolling them out in the California towns of Folsom, Gilroy, Harris Ranch, Barstow, Tejon Ranch, and Los Angeles. They’ll be switched on early next month. Over the next year, Tesla intends to build dozens more, likely beginning in the northeast United States, and promises to have more than 100 stations throughout the country by 2015. According to Tesla, the plan is to enable, “fast, purely electric travel from Vancouver to San Diego, Miami to Montreal and Los Angeles to New York.”

The company isn’t stopping there. It plans to begin installing Supercharger stations in Europe and Asia in the second half next year, just in time for deliveries to begin overseas.

The Supercharger stations provide 100 kilowatts of charging power, with the potential to increase to 120 kilowatts in the future. All that juice is provided by solar power systems that the automaker developed in cooperation with SolarCity — where Musk is Chairman. According to Tesla, there are nearly no maintenance costs of the stations, and because of the projected usage (or lack thereof), extra energy will be pushed back into the grid.

While Tesla declined to comment on the exact cost of the stations, sources tell us that each six-car port costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000, with the total cost to cover the planned 100 stations at between $20 million and $30 million.

This new network of quick chargers is a boon for Model S owners, but it raises questions about both the efficacy of only allowing Tesla’s sedans to access the stations, and what toll this rapid charging will take on the battery packs.

The massive, 20 kilowatts of onboard charging capacity available on the Model S allows for the quick charging capabilities, but sending that much juice that quickly to the packs can degrade the lithium ion cells if done with regularity. Tesla makes it clear that these stations are only for occasional use, say, if a Model S owner wants to make a trek from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, stopping for a 30-minute top-up on the way down.